In our look at the ATP Matchfacts at the two-month mark of the 2015 tennis season, we examine the players who are best at returning second serves. In this category we do find a good mix of players, ranging from claycourters who grind out long points after getting the serve back to power players who attack a week second offering.

But it is a surprise that big man Tomas Berdych leads is in this one winning a tour-best 60% of second serve returns. That’s ahead of No. 2 Novak Djokovic, No. 3 Rafael Nadal and No. 5 David Ferrer who are all considered among the best returners. But you never hear Tomas’s name in the category. Maybe you should.

Berdych finished fifth in this category last year, and his career average is a respectable 52%, equal to Andy Murray’s.

Speaking of Murray, he ranks just outside the Top 10 at No. 11 winning 54%. And Roger Federer is 16th at 52%.

There is a problem with these stats, as the piece on the ATP Page says, they do not include the Australian Open. Only the most important tournament played in these last two months.
So these numbers are skewed.
I commented it to Greg Sharko and he said that the numbers for Grand Slams are done in a different format and they were not available.
I suggested to him waiting for them instead of printing misleading stats, but he seems to think that the fact that he stated in the article that they were not included makes it all right.
I disagree. If I rule on a case by stating beforehand that I did not look at all the available evidence, the fact that I came clean doesn’t make the ruling fair. LOL
I suggest waiting to have all the numbers with us.

Just click on the heading of the column you are interested to get the ranking.

So, a few stats from there:

best returner: Nadal, Djokovic, Murray, Ferrer.
But the key stat here is the median rank of the opponent: for Rafa it is 44, for Novak 17…

This stat is very important, and I checked it for the last few year (since TAbs. exists). Here is the ranking: Djokovic 17, Murray 25, Federer 25, Nishikori 26,5, Klizan 31,5, Ferrer 33, Wawrinka 33, Berdych 33, Cilic 35 (I omited players with less than 20 matches), then a few well ranked players: Dimitrov 43, Nadal 44, Tsonga 45, Raonic 48.

The “median” ranking means that the player played the same number of matches with players ranked below and above that number.

It is easy to check matches against top ten opposition, and we see that Novak has played a lot against top 10. It is also interesting to note that his results, since 2012, have steadily improved — after that exceptional 2011 season, 2012 was below average, while 2013 and 2014 are at the same level (about 80% of wins).

I tried to quantified the impact of Boris Becker, estimating that his results in the last 52 weeks could be representative enough. But…

Comparing the last 52 weeks with 2013 (when Novak played quite well), I had to put it all in context first: Novak, in 2013, had a median opponent ranked 22 and an average opponent ranked 37,4 while the number for the last 52 weeks are 17 and 22,4. It made a big difference, and Novak’s stats are a bit worse now than in 2013.

So I decided to focus only on his matches against top 20 players. Novak played 41 matches against top20 in 2013, 30 in the last 52 weeks; median/average ranking were 7 and 8,9 in 2013, 8 and 8,4 respectively in the last year. Let’s see here:

Novak is ranked 39 in the top 50, Fed is among the very best, and the avg time is 39 mn.

I checked also the second per point stat, but the problem is the time spent BETWEEN points. In that category, Rafa is ranked first, Andy second, Novak third (most time per point).

What about the number of points played?

Avg. points per match:

Djokovic: 152
Federer: 149
Nadal: 144

OK, you’ll say that Novak wins a lot more on opponent serve but… it is not the case. The domination ratio is about the same for all three players (Fed 1,37, Rafa and Novak 1,35), and when we see that they lose from 1,9 to 2,1 points on their serve… Anyway, stats are easy to check there too: Novak and Rafa play 6,6 points per return game, Fed plays 6,8. They win between 2,7 and 2,9 points per return game. The difference quite irrelevant.

@mat4: I absolutely loved your posts. It has been obvious to many of us that Novak has had tougher competition than his main rivals. It is very nice to have that feeling supported by numbers.

I had only counted top 10 opponents over the past 4 years. And Novak has played many more than Roger/Rafa/Andy, both in absolute and in relative terms, as percentage of their total matches. Nole has climbed the mountain through the most difficult path and he sits alone at the very top.

All these numbers just add to Novak’s stature. :-)

@Daniel: Thank you for the observation. In the original Sharko post the Australian Open was not included. He himself said that in the first paragraph. I had a discussion with him on Twitter…I’m glad the Australian Open numbers have been added.